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Inside the FP Story’s Sixth Season Launches

Season 6 of Inside the FP Story Discusses Sexual and Reproductive Health


Our Inside the FP Story podcast explores the fundamentals of designing and implementing family planning programming. We’re excited to announce the launch of Season 6, brought to you by Knowledge SUCCESS and FHI 360. This will introduce the fundamentals of sexual and reproductive health (SRH)—going beyond family planning to discuss issues like HIV, menstrual health, and self-care. The season features practical examples and experiences from community members, health providers, and program implementers from diverse settings to put research and programs into context. We interviewed guests from around the world, ranging from Mozambique to Mexico City, including youth-led organizations, clinicians, gender specialists, researchers and young people.

Inside the FP Story is a podcast developed with and for the global family planning workforce. Each season, we feature honest conversations with guests from around the world about issues that matter to our programs and services. For Season 6, we are moving beyond a narrow definition of “family planning” to explore the larger context of sexual and reproductive health (SRH). Being able to understand the holistic framework—and the range of concerns that affect FP clients, beyond contraception—can help ensure access to higher quality services for all who need them. Topics like comprehensive sexuality education, menstrual health, and HIV prevention have been mentioned in previous seasons of the podcast, but we have not covered them extensively. Season 6 will feature guests that can help us understand the overall SRH framework and related issues in-depth. We will also discuss tools, resources, and models to help us implement programs that take all these issues into account.

Our first episode will begin with the fundamentals of comprehensive and inclusive SRH—including key definitions and background. Our guests will also describe why they think people should care about SRH and what is in their “ideal” SRH program, which will lay the foundation for the remaining episodes this season. 

Our second episode will explore key issues of adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health (or AYSRH). We will hear from guests—including members of the Contraceptive Technology Innovation (CTI) Exchange Youth Council—about key AYSRH issues and how programs can be more inclusive and responsive to the needs of young people. 

For our third episode, we will discuss the importance of integrating FP and HIV services. Our guests will discuss various approaches they take in their programs to ensure that these key SRH services refer to one another and are provided in the same location.  

Our fourth and fifth episodes focus on menstrual health. The fourth episode will lay out the importance of integrating menstrual health and FP on many levels, including through service delivery. And the fifth episode will focus on understanding and addressing the ways in which contraceptive methods may impact and change the menstrual cycle.

The season will conclude with an episode on self-care in SRH. This emerging field presents immense opportunities to expand access and quality of SRH care, particularly for those in remote and fragile settings. 

This season of Inside the FP Story is brought to you in partnership with FHI 360, a global organization that mobilizes research, resources and relationships so that people everywhere can access the opportunities they need to lead full healthy lives. FHI 360 has more than 4000 staff working in more than 60 countries around the world and recently celebrated its 50 year anniversary. They work extensively in sexual and reproductive health—from contraceptive development and introduction to social norms and behavioral research, from HIV prevention and treatment to menstrual health, integrated health projects on maternal, newborn, child health, family planning and nutrition, and much more. FHI 360’s experience, insights, and research is key to this season of the podcast. 

New episodes will be published every Wednesday starting August 2. Want a list of relevant resources and tools related to the topics covered this season? Check out this FP insight Collection.

Inside the FP Story is available on the Knowledge SUCCESS website, as well as Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also find relevant tools and resources, along with French transcripts of each episode, at KnowledgeSUCCESS.org.

Sarah V. Harlan

Partnerships Team Lead, Knowledge SUCCESS, Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs

Sarah V. Harlan, MPH, has been a champion of global reproductive health and family planning for more than two decades. She is currently the partnerships team lead for the Knowledge SUCCESS project at the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs. Her particular technical interests include Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) and increasing access to longer-acting contraceptive methods. She leads the Inside the FP Story podcast and was a co-founder of the Family Planning Voices storytelling initiative (2015-2020). She is also a co-author of several how-to guides, including Building Better Programs: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Knowledge Management in Global Health.

Catherine Packer

Technical Advisor - RMNCH Communications and Knowledge Management, FHI 360

Catherine is passionate about promoting the health and well-being of under-served populations around the world. She is experienced in strategic communications, knowledge management, project management; technical assistance; and qualitative and quantitative social and behavioral research. Catherine's recent work has been in self-care; DMPA-SC self-injection (introduction, scale-up, and research); social norms related to adolescents’ reproductive health; postabortion care (PAC); advocacy for vasectomy in lower- and middle-income countries; and retention in HIV services of adolescents living with HIV. Now based in North Carolina, USA, her work has taken her to many countries including Burundi, Cambodia, Nepal, Rwanda, Senegal, Vietnam, and Zambia. She holds a Master of Science in Public Health degree specializing in international reproductive health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Emily Hoppes

Technical Officer (Product Development and Introduction), FHI 360

Emily Hoppes is a Technical Officer on the Product Development and Introduction team in the Global Health, Population and Nutrition group at FHI 360. Emily has more than 8 years of experience designing and implementing HIV prevention, menstrual health, and SRH programs across East Africa. In her role at FHI 360, she is contributing to the family planning strategy through management of the CTI Exchange and a variety of other activities, including work to better integrate family planning and menstrual health.